While TEFCA has advanced interoperability nationally, Signature Healthcare (Brockton, Mass.) has gone even further and embraced interoperability as part of its business plan to remain independent. Part of these efforts was its adoption of MEDITECH’s advanced national interoperability network, Traverse Exchange. The network enables the secure exchange of health information between healthcare organizations, regardless of their EHR system. Traverse Exchange leverages a FHIR-first design to enhance data usability, ultimately reducing workload for care teams and optimizing the patient experience.
Signature Vice President and Chief Information Officer Joe Diver recently sat down with MEDITECH Senior Director of Interoperability Market and Product Strategy Mike Cordeiro to discuss interoperability and how they are leveraging it for strategic advantage within their Expanse EHR.
MC: As a healthcare system, you provide a number of services to your growing patient population. How does Traverse Exchange support care coordination?
JD: One of the specialties we provide is cancer care, and a goal is to keep our patients within our network. But, if our patients choose to go outside of the network, we can exchange that data pretty easily through Traverse Exchange. This improves care coordination by closing those gaps, driving better outcomes, and reducing costs. Most importantly, we’re improving the experience for our consumers. So we’re really excited about this network, and leveraging it to help us continue to thrive and survive, so we can remain fiercely independent as a community hospital.
MC: In 2023, you opened three urgent care facilities after Signature’s hospital closed due to a serious fire. More than 50% of the patients treated at these facilities were from outside of Signature’s network. Can you share some of the lessons learned about the value of interoperability from that experience?
JD: It is so important to know as much as possible about any patient that you haven’t treated before. It is equally valuable to know as much as possible about our patients who receive care at facilities outside of the network so we can better coordinate their overall care plans. Like many health systems, there is part of our population that travels regularly, like the snowbirds who head down to Florida for the winter. We want to be able to coordinate their ongoing care with the providers that they see as they travel. And ultimately, clinicians will have access to the most meaningful information available within their workflows. Interoperability and MEDITECH’s Traverse Exchange network support these objectives.
MC: Can you share what prior data exchange was like for providers and what you envision it will be like as we roll out additional data utility features with Traverse Exchange?
JD: Data exchange occurred, but the continuity care documents were clunky, chunky, and, while available, were not very useful for many of our providers. They wanted something better.
Traverse Exchange is going to help us take friction away from our providers and make it easier to access those records as we move forward. We can see that a lot of the value propositions for us, and certainly the clinical data exchange with referring partners, are going to help our growth strategy.
MC: How does improved data sharing impact your independence?
JD: If we are able to exchange data with Epic or Oracle Cerner sites, we don’t have to change our EHR strategy to really thrive and survive in this market.
MC: As a value-based care system, data exchange with payers is important but so is privacy. One of the use cases MEDITECH is exploring involves data exchange with payers. How would you see this impacting Signature?
JD: Traverse Exchange is going to lead us down a path of being able to provide the appropriate level of access to our payer partners so we can coordinate care and also cut down costs. It would be a win-win partnership between us and the payers. And, most importantly, it will benefit the patients.
MC: Any last thoughts on interoperability at Signature Health?
JD: Advancing interoperability supports our value-based care and population health initiatives as well as improves care, quality, and patient retention. We look forward to continuing on our path of growth, independence, and excellent care delivery for our community of almost 500,000 residents in the area.
Signature Healthcare is one of many MEDITECH customers turning to Traverse Exchange to eliminate data fragmentation and transform meaningful data into actionable insights. Watch the full interview with Signature Healthcare and learn more about how Traverse Exchange is advancing interoperability in healthcare.
